Between 1979 and 2008, the number of school-age children (ages 5-17) in the United States who spoke a language other than English at home increased from 3.8 to 10.9 million, or from 9 to 21 percent of the population in this age range, according to the latest figures from the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES).

Perhaps one of the greatest examples of inequity lies in a joint investigation of the Department of Justice and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that revealed last October that Boston Public Schools had failed to properly identify and adequately serve thousands of ELLs since 2003 as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.